[I've been
reading]
World Running Down

A neat combination of a desert salvager dystopian novel and a trans queer romance. Valentine’s been saving money for his transition by doing a series of somewhat sketchy salvage jobs with his only-sort-of-supportive work partner but then he meets Osric (an AI which usually lives in the network, ported somehow into a human body) who gives him the option of doing one big job and maybe getting everything he wants. There are a lot of interesting analogies drawn between the AI in the “wrong” body and Valentine also being in the wrong body which I think work fairly well. There are some very sweet parts to this story which takes place in a lot of places where the characters aren’t always comfortable. It’s incredibly well done and the type of book that you don’t see many of but I hope we’ll see more of.